Amphoteric surfactants have been used for many applications including but not limited to personal care, mining, IOR, oil field drilling, fracturing, acidizing, foaming, agricultural formulations because of their unique properties, such as electrolyte tolerance, hard water tolerance, mildness and low irritation, foaming, wetting, reduced interfacial tension, viscoelasticity, and thermal stability. U.S. Pat. No. 7,373,977 discloses the use of certain amidopropyl dimethyl betaines and alkyl dimethyl betaines as viscoelastic surfactants for oil well stimulations. U.S. Pat. No. 7,556,098 discloses the use of certain unsaturated amidopropyl dimethyl betaine, alkyldimethyl betaines, amidopropyl dimethyl sultaines, and alky dimethyl sultaines to lower interfacial tension (IFT) to ultralow values for the recovery of residual oil. However, for oil field applications, one of the short comings of these products is their high adsorption to solid surfaces. The high adsorption of the amphoteric surfactants prevents the surfactant from propagating through the reservoir and the oil recovery is limited.
It would be very valuable if an amphoteric surfactant or surfactants could be developed having all the desired properties of existing amphoteric surfactants along with low adsorption onto solid phase. This allows these sulfonated amphoteric surfactants to be used in applications where adsorption is a critical factor.